[yu/rain] traiteur

[aryas]

title: traiteur
verse: yu
word count: 1940
notes: prayer at the end credit to bob. this is for thia.

I.

Your childhood is wasted years clinging to a memory of a woman singing you a lullaby, her hands warm around your tiny little hands as she kissed your forehead and leave you to sleep. How you woke up from daydreams due to a loud song blaring from your cousin’s speakers. How you drew flowers in the spring, Mardi Gras in the summer, naked trees in the autumn and snowmen in the winter.

Every once in a while a package arrived from Belgium instead of unpaid bills. Your mother sent you cards and gifts but you weren’t sure you wanted it or not. You wanted her back here, watching you smear paint in the canvas, but you didn’t say anything about that.

Instead you write back empty letters full of meaningless words (“I’m doing fine, Mama. Remy is fine too.”), full of lies but she never saw through it. You wished she did.

 

 

She was younger than you. She asked a lot of questions you found annoying at first. You breathe quickly before answering.

She was like a sister to you, a sibling, more than Remy ever did with his loud music and illegal tendencies. Her hand is warm, contrast to your cold hands, her laughter full of feelings, unlike yours: a rumble from your chest alone.

She was your first fan, in a way. You liked the way she clung to you. When you made her cry, you felt like you just swallowed ground earth. When you made her laugh, you found molasses in your tongue. There is simple happiness in a while, you’d think, like the way she looked at you.

 

 

Your newfound brother looked at you like looking at a fragile glass. His eyes are black as night. He didn’t say anything, didn’t show anything, he just looked at you, in the most uncomfortably harmless way to look at someone.

“Father never touched another woman since killing mother,” he said finally, after fifteen minutes of silence with uncomfortably shifting and looking at empty walls involved. “At least I thought so.”

“I see,” you responded.

“What kind of a person is Miss Rénee?”

You looked at him before sighing. “My mother is a traiteur, Akio.” You expected him to ask what it meant, but he only stared back at you, as if waiting for you to continue with his silence. “She’s a doctor. But she doesn’t only heal with things doctors uses this day. She uses faith, too. Her touch calms people. I know it’s not just superstition—I saw it. I saw it.”

Akio Katou, a brother you’d never thought you have, from a world’s away from the Mardi Gras and pickpockets, pressed his lips into a thin line.

You frowned and looked at the floor. “He knew my mother for a long time, even long before your mother’s death. My mother love him like he’s her entire world. He can’t be with her though. He never could. But he should have. He should have.”

You thought he’d only be silent. But he asked, “That might be right. But what about my mother?”

That knocked the wind out of you. But you responded, hesitant: “I still stand by my mother. She’s my mother.”

There’s a long silence before he laughed. “Me too.”

 

 

Happiness is a simple thing. One moment it’s there, so close, and the next, it’s so far away.

They were leaving. You wished you weren’t making all of that about yourself, but you felt like you were going to lose something. After smiling and saying your goodbyes, you went home to an empty house, your cousin nowhere to be found.

The next week, your cousin still wasn’t home. Then: your phone rang.

 

 

Human would never be satisfied because our hearts are too large for our chest—we’ll always pore over the loss over something, even if what we lost before is found, you thought as you tried painting a girl with stars in her eyes; but all her features were wrong, wrong, wrong.

Four years after, a woman came from Belgium instead of a package.

 

 

II.

Your mother taught you Cajun because she was tired of you asking. You carefully treaded the words, your hand tracing words from the book your mother gave you. The words sound so foreign in your mouth, and you spent hours trying to pronounce a word right, but it was worth the trouble.

Your mother laughed and told you to wrote a story for the last assignment of the Cajun lessons. You frowned at first, protesting, but at the end you did it, in a sketchbook your mother gave you at Christmas. You painted in between the stories, and the sketchbook became a fairytale book.

Once upon a time there lived a boy who loved a girl, it said.

 

You spent three years with your mother.

It wasn’t enough. Nothing would ever be enough. You’ve spent seven years living with your stupid criminal piece of crap you sometimes hesitated to call a cousin. You wanted to be with her, with her, maybe came to Belgium with her, but you didn’t say anything about it. You’re eighteen now, shush.

She patted your head and kissed your cheeks. You stared at her leaving, her back turned to you, and just stayed silent and still, staring. Stay, Mama, you wanted to say. Stay. Don’t go. You opened your mouth, but nothing came out but silence.

She, of course, never noticed. The car drove away and you’ve left alone, again.

 

 

You came back to the house you grew up in. Your cousin looked great.

The painting you left is still there. You stared at it, silent. Then the faint pain came back.

She left. She won’t come back.

 

 

“Arisu?”

It had been a long time since you pronounced the name. The name sounded like what the French word sounded in your mouth when you first learnt it, the way you carefully pronounced it for it not to sound odd, not letting your feelings be shown in your face like an open book.

She turned to you. Her hair is blond, shades lighter than her hair back then, and you stared at her, at the way she looked at you. The faint pain intensified. She looked different. She didn’t look like a girl with mouth full of stars. She didn’t look like someone you never had but you missed, for years.

“Hibari-san?” She asked, taken aback.

You breathed quickly before answering: “Yeah. It’s me.”

 

 

Once upon a time there was a boy who missed something he never had.

 

 

You painted for hours, for days, after she left. You still couldn’t get her face right, but the happiness in your chest stayed for days. Your phone rang and rang but you didn’t pick it up, didn’t answer it, and like possessed, you keep painting and painting until there was different sorts of paint under your nails.

Your girlfriend broke up with you for not answering your call. You didn’t flinch though. Only said “Okay,” making her more upset than before, but you two were done, your reaction would have just erase her regrets for breaking up with you. You didn’t really care either way.

 

 

When your cousin went to jail for selling drugs in the street, you went to Brooklyn and knocked on a door of an expensive flat. There was a bloody handprint on the pavement in front of the flat, and you remembered a story someone told you. Your sister, with her undercut and blond hair, opened the door and grinned.

“What’s up, Alo?” she asked, and you glanced at the piercings on her ears. She glanced behind her, to the opened bedroom door and tilted her head. “You can’t come in. Fio’s sleeping.”

“Ageha, cher, don’t call me that,” you said first. “Also, I won’t wake Fiona up, but I also don’t have the intention of coming in. I’m just here to say—uh, can I borrow your old house?”

Ageha regarded you with a glance, “It’s that girl, isn’t it?”

You’re not sure what to say, so you just smiled.

 

 

Akio picked you up at the airport when you arrived, and you spent the whole ride in silence. It wasn’t until you got off at Ageha’s old house that you looked at him, who was helping you carry your suitcase, and asked, “How’s Arisu?”

He pressed his lip into a thin line and replied, “Ah. About that...” he trailed off, as if trying to find the right, the softest way to say what he was going to say. You put your things on the ground and stared at him, frowning.

Then: you suddenly knew a boy with a sick father.

 

 

When you said you love her it felt like lifting a weight from your shoulder, and then doubling the weight two times the previous was. Je t’aimais. Je t’aime. Je t’aimerai.

She loved you, but. There was always a but in every story, and you didn’t like this one better than the others.

Once upon a time, there was a boy whose heart hurt so much. Choose me, he wanted to say. But instead, he said, out of compromising: choose him. It’s okay. I will be alright. I will be. Être heureux pour moi. Ça va.*

 

 

III.

When you saw him, your heart fell.

He had his hand around her waist. You stopped dead in your tracks. You stared for a while, before sighing, ignoring the feelings pooling in your chest. Your hand reached for your pocket, trying to find the usual pack of cigarette before remembering you were wearing clothes made from her hands, not the usual shirt and leather coat you usually wore.

You mumbled something in French and walked away from the place. When you saw Akio, you asked him for one cigarette and he looked at you like looking at a fragile thing and handed you a pack full of it.

 

 

“I love you,” she said.

“I loved you, I love you, I will always love you,” you said.

 

 

Ageha texted you the next morning. How was it? The text said.

You replied: How was what? Nothing happened.

Tell me the truth.

He’s her fiance now.

Two hours later, she replied: Pauve ti bete**.

 

 

You spent two days drinking. You drank to forget something it takes you four bottles to name.  You spent two days breathing the same way you breathe when your mother left you, your throat stuck with words you never said. Even though you knew that it would happen. Even though you knew you’ve let it happen.

“Vous devez laisser aller maintenant, Alouette.”***

 

 

The two last time she came to your house, there was a picture of you and a girl in the living room.

“Is that your girlfriend?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you love her?”

“I do. Mais elle n'est pas vous.”****

“What does that mean?”

You smiled. “She is my whole world.”

 

Oh Lord, grant that I shall never seek so much to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, or to be loved as to love with all my heart.

With all my heart.

 

(IV.

I loved a girl
with never ending
questions;
with her bright smile
and        laughter lines
lighting her face

over the years
I have loved her
with my cold hands
trying to trace
where her warmth used to
belong
(with me)

but:
I have come to peace
with the lines of
some love have to be
apart
some love aren’t
meant to happen
some love has
the wrong condition
the wrong place
the wrong time

but believe me,
I will always love her

no matter what.)


[end.]

*Be happy for me. That's enough.
**Poor little thing.
***You have to let go now, Alouette.
****But she is not you.